


Hair Like Moonlight (and smiles like glass)

by queervulcan



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Depression, Gen, Genderqueer Character, Loneliness, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Past Child Abuse, nonbinary Viktor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 18:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9136906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queervulcan/pseuds/queervulcan
Summary: Skaters’ hearts are as fragile as glass.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't speak Russian, so correct me if I'm wrong on it. I don't own Yuri on Ice, though I love that show with all my gay heart can hold.

Viktor's earliest memory is of his mother.

It is sweet smelling perfume, like over ripe berries. Her soft, blonde hair that Viktor would wrap his hands around and braid for her. Her smile, like that of a sun, of LED lights.

She would call him her _моя звезда_ , her star.

Her future had been as bright as her laughter, that of a stunning ballerina, but she had never wanted to be a prima.

He would never forgive the man behind the wheel of the other car for taking her from him.

Viktor still had nightmares of that night.

* * *

After his mother's death, social workers tried to locate his father.

Viktor knew they were pushing so hard because his mother, while stunning and beautiful, had not updated her will, so he was set under no one's care in the case of her death. _No godparents_ , they would whisper with pity, _not even friends_.

Viktor learned to tune them out, and when they found his father, he gritted his teeth and smiled.

* * *

The next 5 years were hellish, with social workers in Russia all but forgetting he existed.

At first, when they still dropped around, his father had been everything Viktor had wanted in a father. He had been loving, attentive, had taken him ice skating and to dances and had even allowed Viktor to pursue all the things he had done with his mother.

But as the visits tapered, so did the faux warmth.

He no longer smiled, no longer looked in his direction. To a boy who was accustomed to being the center of attention, the light of someone's life, this hurt Viktor.

But he would do as he always did, he promised. He would grit his teeth and smile.

* * *

When Viktor was ten, he decided he had had enough.

There came a time when sneaking out at night to ice skate, hiding under beds when his father had one too many, and of nursing bruises and sprains when he should have been doing homework was more than even he could handle.

So he cried.

And when he was finished, he wrapped his hair under a scarf, and ran with what was most important to him- a photograph of his mother, his skates, and bejeweled hair pins that had belonged to his maternal grandmother.

* * *

The few places he had reached before Yakov had been dirty, unsafe even for a boy his age.

His mother always whispered to him at night, where other children got fairy tales: survive, smile, even when they want to rip you from your podium.

Viktor first jumped from dilapidated buildings, stealing whatever he could to survive, until he reached far enough away from his father that they couldn't find him.

By then, he had managed to reach Saint Petersburg, barely scraping by alive. But he had done it. He was far away from the ghosts of his past. Now, he had to move forward.

* * *

When Viktor tried to enter Yakov's rink, the receptionists tried to shoo him away.

They had taken one look at the thin, bedraggled boy and said, _no, not here_.

Thankfully, the moon and stars were aligned for Viktor, as Yakov had been there, younger and with more color in his hair.

Yakov saw something in the way the little boy trembled, eyes darting around, at the worn out skates slung around his neck.

Viktor, even years later, questions what Yakov saw in him then.

* * *

After spotting the ten year old boy, Yakov had passed him to Lilia for intensive ballet training.

In between ballet, he would skate.

On the ice, he was like a wildebeest. He was fire, and he burned down everyone he passed.

There was a new light in his eyes, and it said: win, win, prove them all wrong.

Between bruises, blisters, and sprained muscles, Viktor never once complained, never once said enough was enough.

* * *

Yakov was not a stupid man.

But this boy he had impulsively taken in- he was not his son.

When Lilia and him fought, he would come to check on Viktor when the night was over, like every night, and would find him asleep curled in the closet underneath what few clothes Yakov had bought for him.

When the light from the hallway spilled into the room from the partially open door, Yakov could see tear stains on the boy's pale cheeks, and his stomach would do a lurch.

And gently, as if cradling a newborn foal, he would pick him up and tuck him into the bed that seemed to engulf him even more on those nights.

* * *

Over the years, Viktor stopped flinching, stopped hiding.

But he never stopped remembering, and he always looked behind his shoulder.

* * *

Viktor promised himself, that he would burn down everyone who got in his way.

* * *

At fifteen, he was smart enough to know who he was. Not always a girl, but not always a boy.

In Russia, they would poke fun, sometimes even harm people who were like him. But his face was too famous, and his fame is what protected him from the more zealous Russian citizens.

After Viktor had won his first major competition, he had splurged on an apartment. It was dingy, and there were cracks in the foundation and had mice, but it was _his_.

He could finally stop feeling like a burden.

Here, he could be free to be himself. Behind locked doors and sealed windows, he could don all the dresses, the skirts, he could be _himself_ until he was brave enough to go outside as he felt.

A year later, he did it on national television.

His hair, long and thick, and the way he moved on the ice. The lights, when it shined on his hair, made him look like a god. They called him ethereal, almost feminine. Viktor would give them one of his rockstar smiles, and would not deny a single word.

And Viktor drank those words up like hummingbirds sipped at nectar.

After that, no one, not even Yakov, could truly hold him back.

* * *

As a gift to himself for finally, finally being the best, just like his mother had wanted him to be, he bought himself a better apartment when the lease on the old was over, one closer to his rink, and with the extra money he bought himself a brown poodle.

Makkachin, he called it. His best friend.

* * *

Viktor was twenty when he realized his life hadn't turned out the way he had expected.

In the beginning, skating had been fun. It had warmed his soul to see people yelling his name, to receive their roses and their love.

At some point, that fun had vanished, and he had become as empty as his father.

* * *

Viktor convinced himself that if he didn't skate until he was raw and bruised and bloody, then there was no point to him.

Out of sheer frustration at not being able to memorize his program, he cut his hair. It was choppy, and when he surfaced from the hysteria, he called a hairdresser friend to come fix it, and then tipped them well for their time.

After that, he could do his program in his sleep.

* * *

He wasn't sure when he stopped dreaming, just that he had.

Life no longer had colors, had no meaning besides to skate until his body was sore and bleeding.

He woke, skated, slept, and repeated. Like the cycle of washing one's hair.

The one bright spot to his life was his precious dog.

* * *

Viktor knew he was empty, that his smiles had become plastic, and yet fragile like glass.

But he had to _win_.

* * *

The night of the banquet when he met Yuuri was the first genuinely happy moment he had had since his mother. Here, he wasn't winning a medal, wasn't smiling for the cameras.

He was just a tipsy man with a drunken man in his arms.

And so he laughed, he laughed until his sides ached, until he could no longer laugh and instead made little wheezing sounds.

At the end of the night, his feet ached, but his stomach was cramped from laughter, and his cheeks were flushed from joy.

Viktor would always associate his love for Yuuri with forget-me-not flowers, with sunshine hitting Yuuri's upturned, smiling face at just the right angle.

Blue, to Viktor, was the color of love, of rebirth, of happiness.


End file.
